Ballot initiative lets motorists off hook

Imagine ordering the usual for dinner at your favorite restaurant. When the check arrives, you are surprised to find a $2 surcharge for "movie tickets."

When you demand an explanation, the waiter says the local theaters were losing money. Moviegoers did not want to pay higher ticket prices, so to save the theaters, they decided to make restaurant patrons pay for their tickets.

If the waiter's explanation seems outrageous, it might interest you to know a new ballot initiative uses the same logic to pay for transportation. The initiative, which the private group "Missourians for Safe Transportation and New Jobs" supports, proposes a 1 percent sales tax on all businesses for 10 years. Its purpose is to raise $8 billion for the cash-strapped Missouri Department of Transportation, or MoDOT, to use on transportation — mainly road — projects. MoDOT needs the cash because during the last decade its road construction costs have rapidly risen while gas tax revenues fell. In 2012, MoDOT's expenditures outstripped its funding by more than $300 million. If something is not done, MoDOT might not have the funds to maintain, much less improve, more than 33,000 miles of state roads.

MoDOT might need money, but implementing a state sales tax is the wrong policy. The fundamental problem with MoDOT funding, which a sales tax would only exacerbate, is that people who use the roads are paying less than their fair share. With a sales tax, those who use public transportation, ride their bike to work or simply drive less end up subsidizing those who use roads more often. Aside from being fundamentally unfair, the policy incentivizes individuals to drive more and shop less, because road use is artificially cheap and shopping is artificially expensive. That behavior results in increased congestion and pollution.

The real solution to MoDOT's funding problems is simple: Make drivers pay for the roads. Aside from the fairness issue, charging users for the amount of road used will discourage overuse of highways and create a sustainable funding structure for MoDOT. Faced with higher gas prices and tolls, people will drive less or opt for fuel-efficient vehicles. This reduces congestion, road degradation and pollution.

At 17 cents a gallon, Missouri has one of the lowest gas taxes in the country. This is not automatically a bad thing, but it is an issue when state road maintenance is underfunded. If Missouri simply raised its rate to adjust for the inflation since the tax was set in 1996, MoDOT calculated it would get additional revenues of more than $150 million per year.

Another option is to toll new or improved roads. Other states, such as Texas and Oklahoma, have low gas taxes, but they finance roads with toll revenue. Tolling Interstates 70 and 44, along with new bridges such as the proposed Washington, Mo., bridge over the Missouri River, could greatly defray project costs. Missouri could find financing for roads and bridges in the private sector by auctioning the right to build or operate those tollways.

Implementing a 1 percent sales tax would encourage congestion, incentivize pollution and unfairly burden those who drive less. MoDOT might need more funds, but a sales tax does more harm than good. Missouri should alter its constitution to create a sustainable transportation tax structure that makes economic sense and enshrines the concept of fairness.

Missouri makes the restaurant patron pay for his meal and the moviegoer pay for his theater ticket; it is time to make drivers pay for their roads.